Officials in Moscow and their allies in Abkhazia and South Ossetia all canceled meetings with international diplomats brokering the discussions, casting the future of the talks into question.
A leadership election in Georgia's biggest opposition party has shown that informal rule may be a more widespread problem in the country than previously thought.
The embassy's chief of security was shot dead, and two other staff were wounded. The attack comes amid Azerbaijan's increasingly strained relations with Iran and blossoming friendship with Iran's archrival Israel.
The surviving popularity of the komuz as a living instrument, rather than a museum artifact, and the flourishing tradition of Kyrgyz folk music is in no small way thanks to Malik Alikeyev, who died on January 17.